


Day 21 - Melancholy

by ReaderRose



Series: 30 Days of Writing [21]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: 30 Days of Writing, Angst and Feels, Child Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route - "I have places to be.", Summer, Teacher Toriel, Thunder and Lightning, Thunderstorms, Undertale Monsters on the Surface
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 02:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14154681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaderRose/pseuds/ReaderRose
Summary: There’s a state of simply feeling sad, sometimes, that accompanies Toriel’s new life on the surface.





	Day 21 - Melancholy

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to do a different one today but it ended up much longer than anticipated, so I pulled this one out pretty quickly.
> 
> Warnings: mourning, thunderstorms, child loss, depression

There’s a state of simply feeling sad, sometimes, that accompanies Toriel’s new life on the surface. **  
**

There is never a particular cause.

She has no lack of friendship to indulge in. Sans is always a text (but never a call) away. Frisk drops by often, bringing gifts and conversation, only to leave again, to whatever places they have to go. She watches them leave, as their bike vanishes below the hill and beyond, to places she cannot watch over them.

She has papers to grade and lessons to plan.

But there are days when Frisk has left, and school is out and there are no lessons.  There are days in the midst of summer, standing outside her little cottage, out of the way of the city, in golden fields overlooking forest, when Toriel simply feels… adrift.

The temperatures drop from sweltering to comfortable. The breeze is cool. The sky reddens, darkens, fades, and clouds gather, sailing on a cool evening breeze. A storm approaches, but just before it arrives, the first splashes of starlight appear across the sky.

And that is when it hits her, each and every time.

While others may have dreamed of the sun and the moon, or oceans and weather, or skyscrapers and buildings, and stars and rains and cars and wide open spaces, what Toriel missed the most in their imprisonment was this feeling.

The feeling of a cold breeze after a hot day. The feeling of electricity in the air. The wafting scent of petrichor and ozone. The feeling of fresh rain breaking through the dryness and onto her head, into her fur, running down her face as a storm. The sound of thunder. The color of the earth as sky brightens in shades of pink and white and purple. The feeling of intensity, as the storm arrives in earnest, violent and thrashing and vengeful. Wind tossing whatever fool stands in its way.

She remembers being a child, the way her mother would yell for her to get inside, not to stand out in the rain.

And she defied, always, until she was dragged back inside. She was too small to stand against a storm. She was so little. Mama had been right all along.

But now, she can hold her own, and she stand in the field and lets the wind try –try!– to stop her.

It cannot.

The grass dances in the night, illuminated in flashes, sparks.

She wonders if  _they_ ever had the privilege of standing in the rain, because it was their choice, and they wanted to. She wonders if he would have taken her hand and come in when she called him, or if he would have to be dragged. Perhaps he would complain that the stars were not out.

Would  _she_ have been scared of thunder? Would  _he_ have tried to out-shout it?  
Would  _she_ have danced in the rain?  
Would  _they_ have taken pictures? Or studied the path of the storm?  
Would  _he_ have enjoyed baking pies at nightfall?  
Would  _she_ have stared down the eye itself?

Would  _they_ ever, one day, chose to stay? To stand beside her, and let the rain wash over them both, strong and alive and completely unafraid?

Toriel can imagine it so clearly, but that is all that Toriel can do.

And then when the storm passes, brief, as a summer storm often is, she goes back inside, and she makes some tea, feeling better, now, that the rain has cried her tears for her.

The melancholy passes, too, and she plans for the next time her child stops by.


End file.
